Review on the Application of Statistical Methods to Maritime Traffic Safety Assessment

For the maritime traffic safety assessment of vessels navigating in harbor or fairway, simulation techniques by using shiphandling simulator system have been traditionally used. When designing the simulation experiments and when analyzing the simulation results, however, there has been a little systematic method. Ship-handling simulations can be regarded as a kind of statistical experiment by using ship-handling simulator system, which means that shiphandling simulation conditions should be designed statistically and that the simulation results should be statistically analyzed as well. For the safe and economic design of harbor and fairway, reasonable decisions based upon the scientific analysis of shiphandling simulation results are indispensable. In this paper, various statistical methods, such as Bayes theorem, statistical hypothesis testing, and probability distributions, are reviewed with a view to application to maritime traffic safety assessment. It is expected that more reasonable decisions on harbor and fairway design can be made from shiphandlers' view point by using statistical methods.